


alls fair in love and war

by ell (amywaited)



Series: fleeting [3]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst, Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 04:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18749497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amywaited/pseuds/ell
Summary: tony has never been truly there. it is a fate he is slowly accepting, except he isn't. not really.





	alls fair in love and war

Tony has always daydreamed about the impermanence of his heart beating. It’s some vague, existential feeling, one that comes and goes and comes and goes but it never strays particularly far. Sort of like a crutch, scaffolding almost. Holding his spine up more than he ever has.

Clouds in the back of his head, a grey sort of blanket drowning everything out, if blankets are cold and painful and covered in spikes that feel physical in a metaphorical way. He can’t ever decide if he likes it. As painful as it is, words pricking holes in his back, smoke choking him out, it feels like home. Like safety and comfort and all the things it shouldn’t be.

Familiarity. Cold, hard truth. A lie he’d like to ignore, maybe, but one that is there anyway. Weaving its way in and out of his head, between truths and lies and truths and more lies and everything in between.

Enough that it feels dizzying whenever he doesn’t feel it. Whenever he’s numbed enough that the cloud falls off his back for a minute or two, enough that he misses it, perhaps more than he should.

Ice cold, except he’s frozen to it. Stuck his ground for too long, and now he can’t move, and bulletproof words are his only release (except they only pull him closer). He supposes he’s lived all his life under the pretence of normal, hidden by the blanket excuse of fame. 

Not popularity, never popularity. But his life is shielded by sunglasses worn indoors, and maybe they’re a part of him now. Melded to his skin like part of a costume. Like moss growing on a tree branch. Another symbolism of life torn away too soon.

He doesn’t know, perhaps, what he’d do if he were to fall away. Despite the fact that every day feels like sinking, and every breath feels like suffocating. He’s dying off and holding on to all the tethers he doesn’t have left. A fate Tony wouldn’t wish upon anyone but himself.

Years of holding up to cut-throat standards, industry standards, health and safety regulations, have taught him to be prepared for this moment. Perhaps he has never been truly there, and perhaps that’s okay, except he thought he was and now it hurts more than it ever did.

All is fair in love and war, he tells himself, without ever really believing it, but the barest pretence of belief is better than none at all.

**Author's Note:**

> did that thing where i try to be cooler than i am. did it backfire? idk. drop us a comment while you're down here, ay


End file.
